Burnden Park was the home of English football club Bolton Wanderers who played home games there between 1895 and 1997.

As well as hosting the 1901 FA Cup Final replay, it was the scene in 1946 of one of the greatest disasters in English football, and the subject of an L. S. Lowry painting. It was demolished in 1999.

Location

Situated on Manchester Road in the Burnden area of Bolton - approximately one mile from the town centre - the ground served as the home of the town's football team for 102 years.

It also hosted the replay of the 1901 FA Cup Final, in which Tottenham Hotspur beat Sheffield United 3-1.

History

Bolton Wanderers was formed in 1874 as Christ Church FC, with the vicar as club president.

After disagreements about the use of church premises, the club broke away and became Bolton Wanderers in 1877 meeting at the Gladstone Hotel.

At this time Bolton played at Pike’s Lane but needed a purpose built ground to play home matches.

As a result Bolton Wanderers Football and Athletic Club, one of the 12 founder members of the Football League, became a Limited Company in 1894 and shares were raised to build a ground.

Land at Burnden was leased at £130 per annum and £4,000 raised to build the stadium.

Burnden Park was completed in August 1895.

The opening match was a benefit match against Preston and the first League match was against Everton in front of a 15,000 crowd.

In its heyday, Burnden Park could hold crowds of up to 70,000, but this figure was dramatically reduced during the final 20 years of its life, mainly because of new legislation which saw virtually all English stadia reduce their capacities for safety reasons.

A section of the embankment was sold off in 1986 to make way for a new Normid superstore (which had closed by the end of the 1990s).

At this time, Bolton were in a dire position financially and were struggling in the Football League Third Division, so there was a low demand for tickets and the loss of part of the ground gave the Bolton directors good value for money.

The club's directors had decided by 1992 that it would be difficult to convert Burnden Park into an all-seater stadium for a club of Bolton's ambition.

They were members of the new Division Two (which was known as the Third Division until the creation of the Premier League) but the club had ambitions to reach the top flight.

The last ever Wanderers game played at the historic ground was against Charlton Athletic in April 1997. Bolton, who were already Division One champions, defeated Charlton 4-1 after being 1-0 down at half time. Whites' legend John McGinlay scored the final goal shortly before Bolton received their trophy and the crowd united in singing Auld Lang Syne.

It was decided to build a new multi-million pound 25,000-seater stadium (later raised to 28,000) - the Reebok Stadium - at the Middlebrook development and the move went ahead in 1997, despite the sadness of many fans.

Burnden Park Disaster

On 9 March 1946, the club's home was the scene of the Burnden Park disaster, which at the time was the worst tragedy in British football history.

33 Bolton Wanderers fans were crushed to death, and another 400 injured, in an FA Cup quarter-final second leg tie between Bolton and Stoke City.

There was an estimated 85,000 strong crowd crammed in for the game, at least 15,000 over-capacity.

The disaster led to Moelwyn Hughes's official report, which recommended more rigorous control of crowd sizes.

Outside football

The railway embankment of Burnden Park was seen in the 1962 film A Kind of Loving, starring Alan Bates and June Ritchie. Part of the Arthur Askey film "The Love Match" was also filmed at Burnden Park in the early 1950s.

A painting of Burnden Park in 1953 by L. S. Lowry, Going to the Match, was bought for £1.9 million by the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA) in 1999.

Redevelopment

For some years, the site suffered.

Travellers camped in the car park of the derelict Normid superstore and Burnden Park itself fell into disrepair, with demolition not taking place until two years after the last match had been played.

As one of the main routes into town, the site needed to be redeveloped after demolition took place in 1999.

There is now an Asda superstore on the site, which opened in 2005 after taking over the Big W.

The Asda store identifies itself with Burnden Park by having a number of extremely large photographs of the former stadium and players, placed high above the checkouts.

Also on the site are a Co-operative travel, a Subway, a Carphone Warehouse and a Johnson's Cleaners adjacent to Manchester Road.

A new DW Sports Fitness centre/sports store has also moved here (roughly where the Burnden Stand was), to make a significant, out of town development.

There is one empty unit situated between Asda and DW Sport which was for conversion into three shops and was due to open November 2007 - January 2008, a Poundstretcher, a Pets Galore and an unknown food shop similar to Home Bargains.